Internet porn and a woman called 'It'

Upsetting: Louise Glass was referred to as 'It' during Richard Keys vulgar remarks to her former boyfriend Jamie Redknapp

By far the most disturbing element of the sexism scandal involving the now sacked Sky football commentators is Richard Keys’s question to the (blameless) former footballer Jamie Redknapp.

‘Did you smash it?’ asked Keys, referring to a woman who had once — long ago —been a girlfriend of Redknapp’s.

Like most readers, I suspect, I’d never heard the term before. But once I understood its meaning, what I found particularly upsetting — apart from its degrading vulgarity — is the way his words dehumanised the woman he was talking about. An ‘it’ is not a wife, a daughter or a mother; an ‘it’ is an object, nameless and meaningless.

The ‘it’, of course, does have a name. Louise Glass was getting ready for the school run when she found out, in a phone call at 8am from her distraught sister, that she’d been referred to in the most revolting terms as an inanimate sex object.

So how did we reach the point where an innocent woman — who is now a married mother with two children — is referred to as something inhuman?

I think one factor may be the ubiquitously desensitising influence of internet porn.

Internet porn makes those Playboy ­centrefolds of old look laughably coy. Yet so many men, including young boys, are using smart phones and laptops to access vile images of extreme porn that it has already changed the landscape of what many of us would call ‘normal’ sexuality.

Exposure to this stuff has a well-documented numbing effect. Watching it can warp the ideas of even the most ‘normal’ of men — ones with loving wives and adored daughters — to the point where he has watched so much extreme porn that he stops viewing women as people and sees them instead only as packages of meat.

Now, I should stress that I have no idea whether Richard Keys has or hasn’t used internet porn. It may be that his ­contemptible attitudes to women were forged long before the age of broadband and 3G phones. But I do know that the statistics tell their own story. More than 45 per cent of men admit that they have viewed internet pornography — a figure that rises to upwards of 70 per cent for those aged between 18 and 34.

Worrying: Statistics show that 90 percent of children under 16 have viewed hardcore internet porn, while the biggest consumers are reported to be children aged 12-17

According to one recent survey, between 60 and 90 per cent of under-16s have viewed hardcore online pornography.

This widespread exposure to the most crude and debasing imagery is what lies behind a society in which women are referred to as ‘it’ not just by TV studio dinosaurs but even in the school playground. It is infecting all ages, all strata of society — and the worst part of it is that too many young girls are playing up to it.

My daughter, who is 15, told me recently of a horrific clip that has been going around London on teenage mobile phones. It shows a naked 14-year-old girl who has filmed herself behaving like a porn star. Apparently, she’d sent the footage to a boy who had just broken up with her, captioned: ‘See what you’re missing.’ And of course the clip was soon forwarded to other schoolchildren around the country.

Campaign: Tory MP Claire Perry is calling for internet porn to be regulated via an 'opt in' system

Making a pornographic clip of yourself at 14 would never have entered the heads of girls 20 or even 10 years ago. Nor would a previous generation have so casually shared another girl’s shame with everyone they knew. That such things are happening now is the direct result of teenage boys’ porn viewing habits — and the ­burden of expectation placed as a result upon teenage girls.

The Conservative MP Claire Perry is campaigning for internet porn to be regulated. Her argument is not that it should be banned, but that it should not be freely available.

Internet service providers, she says, should withhold all pornographic content, offering an ‘opt in’ system requiring potential users to prove they are over 18.

So far Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, under whose remit this suggestion falls, is failing to embrace it. He has talked vaguely about encouraging internet providers to come up with their own methods of protecting children. This is not good enough.

No doubt he thinks that having to force men to opt into porn will be a surefire vote loser — ‘Oh darling, I’ve enabled the porn option, by the way’ is not a conversation most men will feel comfortable having.

But you know what? I don’t care. Because I don’t want women — my daughter, me or anyone else — being referred to, ever, as ‘it’.

Paris Hilton has bulked up. Her shoulders, arms and thighs all show the sort of muscle definition usually associated with serious workouts. She looks as though she’s squaring up for a fight. So who’s in her sights? Can it be coincidence that her new look comes just when our own Cheryl Cole’s arrival in America is said to be imminent?

Silent Treatment

Alexandra Aitken says she fell in love instantly with her husband, a Sikh spiritual teacher she met on a yoga retreat.

For the first week they apparently never spoke a word. Jonathan Aitken’s daughter has chosen to reveal their secret marriage in time-­honoured fashion — with a photoshoot in the decidedly unspiritual Hello! magazine. Pictured without a scrap of make-up, she looks radiantly happy.

I do hope she has made the most of their silent bonding. In my experience it’s once you begin insisting on conversation with your husband that the trouble starts . . .

Pity Poor Tallulah

Demi Moore's daughter Tallulah Belle looked beautiful but ­distinctly glum sitting next to her mother at a fashion show, and I’m not surprised.

How terrible it must be to have a mother who looks like Demi Moore — that is to say, not like a real mother of a teenager at all.

Demi Moore is doing her daughter a great disservice by not showing her how to grow older

After a reported £220,000 worth of cosmetic surgery, including breast implants, a facelift and liposuction on her hips, thighs and stomach, Demi at 48 looks in better shape than she did in her teens.

Poor Tallulah. It’s quite tough enough being 16 without having to worry about being compared to your mother. Far from being an inspirational role model for her daughter, Demi is doing her a great disservice.

We have an obligation to show our daughters how to deal with life’s challenges, and growing older is infinitely easier to cope with if your own mother has already shown you how.

All Demi is doing is showing her children that the future is something to fear.

‘I CAN’T believe you let another one in!’ spluttered my husband in rage as I stopped in rush hour traffic to allow a car in ahead of us. And it’s true I’ve started doing it more and more, mostly because so many drivers now flick their hazard lights on and off as a way of saying ‘thank you’. It’s become an increasingly common courtesy in London’s usually mean streets, and I find I rather like it.

A true Lady should learn to keep secrets

A fly-on-the-wall documentary when she took over as editor of The Lady revealed Rachel Johnson to have a somewhat callous management technique as she set about sacking staff.

Too much information: Rachel Johnson has written an article in which she describes how both she and her daughter have had Brazillian waxes

She has now taken self-exposure a step too far, revealing intimate details about her own daughter in an article for Vogue before taking us through a detailed account of undergoing a Brazilian wax.

There’s obviously nothing ladylike about that, but the fact that she felt the need to reveal that her 15-year-old daughter has also had the procedure is simply unforgiveable. Are there any lengths to which this shameless self-publicist won’t go?

I’M TIRED of anti-monarchists like Colin Firth, who says he doesn’t think we need a Royal Family and that he is not ‘for’ the monarchy because they are unelected. But then I’m fed up with all actors who think they’re as clever as the lines they learn.

The irony is that if Colin really is a republican he’s gone the wrong way about furthering his cause. Everyone I speak to who’s seen The King’s Speech says they emerged teary-eyed and filled with new respect for the monarchy.

Murray's missing a will to win

‘THANK God I’m not playing me,’ Fred Perry would say when he walked into the changing rooms at Wimbledon before a final. He aimed not only to outplay his opponents but also to out-psych them — and always played with total aggression, closing his mind to any thought other than that he would win.

How different to Andy Murray. After his Grand Slam defeat on Sunday he sounded like a man who’d almost given up. ‘I’ve worked really hard, but if it’s not meant to be then it’s not meant to be,’ he said resignedly at one point, before adding that he ‘really liked’ his life outside tennis.

Not convinced: Andy Murray's defeat in the Australian Open final has left Sandra Parsons wondering if he has the drive to win a Grand Slam

Top dogs, in any walk of life, have not only the right talent but, just as important, the right temperament: extraordinary energy, obsessive commitment, and an almost unshakeable self-belief.

Mrs Thatcher had it. I suspect David Cameron found he had it only after his son Ivan was born terribly disabled — the worst that could happen had happened, and I imagine that’s when the iron entered his soul. Nick Clegg, with his 3pm deadline on being given paperwork, evidently does not.